GCN Circular 35081

C.C. Cheung, M. Kerr, J. E. Grove, R. Woolf (NRL), A. Goldstein (USRA), C.A. Wilson-Hodge (MSFC), and M.S. Briggs (UAH) report:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

The Glowbug gamma-ray telescope [1,2], operating on the International Space Station, reports the detection of the short burst, GRB 231117A, which was also detected by Swift/BAT, AstroSat/CZTI, AGILE, and Konus/Wind (GCN 35071, 35072, 35075, 35079). 

Using an adaptive window with a resolution of 32-ms, the burst onset is determined to be 2023-11-17 03:03:18.592 with a duration of 1.024 s and a total significance of about 124.0 sigma. The light curve comprises a single FRED-shaped pulse.

Using a standard power-law function with an exponential high-energy cutoff [3] to model the emission over this duration results in a photon index dN/dE~E^x of x=0.2 and a cutoff energy ("Epeak") of 461 keV.  The modeled 10-10000 keV fluence is 5.1e-06 erg/cm^2.

The analysis results presented here are preliminary and use a response function that lacks a detailed characterization of the surrounding passive structure of the ISS.

Glowbug is a NASA-funded technology demonstrator for sensitive, low-cost gamma-ray transient telescopes developed, built, and operated by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) with support from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, USRA, and NASA MSFC.  It was launched on 2023 March 15 aboard the Department of Defense Space Test Program’s STP-H9 to the ISS.  The detector comprises 12 large-area (15 cm x 15 cm) CsI:Tl panels covering the surface of a half cube, and two hexagonal (5-cm diameter, 10-cm length) CLLB scintillators, giving it a large field of view (instantaneous FoV ~2/3 sky) over a wide energy band of 50 keV to >2 MeV.

[1] Grove, J.E. et al. 2020, Proc. Yamada Conf. LXXI, arXiv:2009.11959
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[2] Woolf, R.S. et al. 2022, Proc. SPIE, 12181, id. 121811O
[3] Goldstein, A. et al. 2020, ApJ 895, 40, arXiv :1909.03006

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